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Case 7b Employment networking in the Hollywood film industry Q1.

. What are the major benefits and drawbacks of using the internet as part of an international research study? Answer: The major benefits of using internet as of an international research study are as follows; 1. Most data could be found online related around the subject area as part of the international research study 2. Easy accessible to information which could be retrieved from any parts of the world 3. Quick and easy way to research any information required 4. Up to date information is always at hand 5. Seminal work is wide spread 6. Cost effective and a lot cheaper to get information and research online The major drawbacks of using the internet as part of an international research study are as follows; 1. Data research maybe incorrect and inaccurate 2. Sources used for researching information may be invalid 3. Online research has some inherent problems which makes the researchers information finding difficult and not easy to access 4. The data researched might be out of date 5. The research may not be backed by academics and the data may be biased

Q2. How valid are the results of the research likely to be? Answer: When talking about the validity of internet research, the results to be given after research has been undertaken around the topic area is very unlikely to be accurate unless you have a good source which is valid, accurate, and most popular which is used often by major companies and researchers. Another reason maybe that the existing databases maybe incomplete, inaccurate and out of date, this would cause the researcher great deal of problems as then his/her research will also not be accurate. But when looking at this case study, the results will not be valid for two main reasons. First of all, as mentioned above, the databases of film crews on the internet cannot be guaranteed to be reliable as people can fake their identity. Although the amount of information available on these databases was considerable, they should not only rely on this information to be the main source. Moreover, when sampling, the response rate is only 25%, of about 45 respondents. This is only more than 1% of the whole population they framed at the beginning (3800 crews). With this small percentage of responses, the result cannot be representative to the whole population. Therefore, the results are not valid.

Q3. Outline the advantages and disadvantages of snowballing? Answer: Advantages of Snowballing are as follows;

1. You can locate hidden populations: this is possible for researchers to include people in the survey which they would have known from before or found from databases 2. Locating people of a specific population: No sources or lists for locating members of the population of a specific interest therefore using the snowballing technique would help identify who these people are. Disadvantages of snowballing are as follows; 1. The technique can be inexact and can produce varied and inaccurate results as the method is heavily reliant on the skill of the individual conducting the actual sampling. 2. There is no way to know the total size of the overall population 3. Lack of definite knowledge as to whether or not the sample is an accurate reading of the target population 4. Lastly targeting the correct people is time consuming and outweighs many costs.

Q4. What do you consider are the ethical issues raised by this research? Answer: The databases on the Internet contains data that is too personal such as contact details, email addresses, telephone numbers, fax number and page number, which are only meant for employers to look at. The researchers used this information to contact the crew for interviews and research purposes might not be morally right. The people who uploaded their information want to let the employers know them better and contact them if they have job offers. They would not expect to get contacted for research purposes, thus they can be very annoyed and disappointed with the website they registered with. This will not only bother the crew but also make the website look bad and not trustworthy to the customers.

Q5. What sampling techniques are being used in this research? Answer: The researchers have carried out multi-stage sampling technique. First of all they do cluster sampling to get 3800 crew in 80 film-related occupations. They only want those who work in the film industry in Los Angeles, rather than the whole of United States. Then they do simple random sampling to send 180 emails for interviews. After that, they choose the snowball sampling technique to get more participants in their study by asking people to recommend other crew whom they work with. Sampling techniques used in this research according to me is simple random and stratified sampling.

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